Two years ago the tightest of the rules we had been living by for two months were finally lifted. We could now meet one other person outside, so long as we stayed two metres away from them. It should have made life easier, but it just seems to have made people more aware of the restrictions we were all still living under.
Thursday 14 May 2020
Yesterday was meant to be first unlock. There was a different atmosphere when I went for a walk in the park. Two separate groups of lads were attempting to kick a football, while staying 2 metres away. One enterprising teenager was meeting her boyfriend – sitting several feet away, each with a can of lager and a boom box between them. The boy was attempting to dance.
None of it looked much fun – mainly because the park was so cold. The mood was summarised in an overheard remark: “How many dates can you have that are just walking?”
For work, I joined a huge skype call with 53 staff, to be told that the PM’s statement won’t make any difference to us: “Carry on as before.” Mike has also been on a long Skype call with 80 others. The only good bit was when one Captain piped up: “The entire fucking Army is here and it’s so tedious I want to shoot myself”. The Colonel stepped in. “This is not the whole Army, just the brigade, and I suggest you mute your mike”. On such small snatches are we building our sense of community.
This morning, as we got up at 7.30, we watched a family of foxes greet the day. A vixen, followed by three fluffy cubs, emerged from a hole underneath our neighbour’s shed. There have always been foxes in our neighbour’s garden, but I’ve never seen them so relaxed, so early in the day, with three cubs. Wildlife is coming into its own.
Saturday 16 May 2020
The excitement of the day was that Mike was meant to be coming round. We had plans: he would arrive at 1.30pm and see us sequentially. Plans are so last year. Mike just rang to say that S is feeling ill and going for a covid test. If it is negative, he will come around midweek, for the first time since February. Since February we have cancelled one holiday, one Mothers’ Day and two birthdays.
Writers do pay a lot of attention to what readers say about their books. And what readers said about ‘Something Wicked‘, my police procedural with tango-dancing vampires, was that they wanted more. So I have taken a break from my historical fiction series about James Burke to produce another Urban Fantasy featuring old-school detective Chief Inspector Galbraith and Chief Inspector Pole, a vampire from the mysterious Section S.
A quick reminder of what ‘Something Wicked’ was about
The latest Galbraith & Pole adventure, ‘Eat the Poor’ sees our detective duo hunting down a werewolf that is killing on the streets of London. For Pole, as ever, the most important thing is to put a stop to the beast’s predations before people realise that it even is a werewolf. Once they begin to realise that werewolves are real, it’s only a matter of time before they begin wondering about vampires, and Pole has spent hundreds of years making sure people don’t think about vampires.
Galbraith doesn’t want people thinking about vampires either. Nor is he happy about the growing body-count in his city. Like Pole, he wants the crimes solved and the werewolf captured.
What neither of them know is that in his human form, the werewolf sits in Parliament.
When I started writing, the idea that you might have a werewolf in the Palace of Westminster seemed ridiculous, but I was happy to go for it in a tongue-in-cheek fantasy. Over the past few months, though, an MP turning into a wolf on the full moon is hardly worthy of note compared to some of the things that have been going on. And a werewolf is, arguably, far from the most evil creature stalking the corridors of power. So my story may now have slightly more of a satirical edge than it did when I started.
Satirical or not, the story is mostly about having fun with the history of werewolves (I had to bone up on my 16th century French to read one early account), and following the growing relationship between my two heroes. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
‘Eat the Poor’ is published next week at £3.99 on Kindle and £6.99 in paperback. You can pre-order it now at mybook.to/EatThePoor.
Every Thursday I post an excerpt from my wife’s journal written two years earlier. A few people have said how much they like this reminder of what was happening, especially as we are often being presented with official versions that don’t seem to fit our memories of the period.
Saturday 9 May 2020
Spring is merging into summer at an alarming rate. Pollen is strewn in snow drifts over paths. The cow parsley is knee high and roses are opening, suddenly and all together. I spotted red campion among the speedwells on the tow path.
We have discovered Hampton Court Home Park. We always knew it was there, but hadn’t ever gone in. We pushed our bikes through the expanse of grass and deer to find Oak Pond. It was just us, on a bench, staring at a single coot. But as the sun lowered and we merged into the still of the evening, we noticed the swan, sitting on a next of eggs, and ducks, and geese, and a kestrel hovering overhead, and parakeets, preternaturally green. How calm it all was.
Home Park May 2020
Yesterday was a bank holiday to mark VE day. We got on our bikes along the tow path to Kingston Bridge, and it looked surprisingly normal. Lots of people strolling along the river, enjoying the sunshine. Queues for Mr Whippy. Cyclists stopping to admire goslings. I’m now quite brown and ever so slightly burnt.
Mike and G spent the bank holiday more patriotically, in their front garden, with a BBQ and bunting, chatting to neighbours. Mike said that the Army, after weeks of working from home (fortunately Putin had his own problems) is being brought back, though other stuff suggests that the Government is rowing back from ending lockdown. Who knows?
The shock of the week was an article in the Guardian, telling us that an MOJ cleaner had died of covid. Two of the guys who clean our office, F and C, were quoted as saying that they were required to work unnecessarily, not given masks and unable to take sick leave. Because the MOJ contracts with a separate company, we had all forgotten about them and no one cared.
Private Eye’s take on the cleaner’s death from April 2022
At our Wednesday skype meeting we talked about a whip round for F and C. But we don’t have any contact details. Could we ask the MOJ? And what about the union, quoted in the Guardian? The management line was that the union were unofficial, and trouble-makers, and we shouldn’t contact them. What? The meeting ended rather inconclusively. I immediately emailed the union, though I don’t know if they will reply.
There is something very wrong with the way we have run the world. These attenuated chains of responsibility, where the MOJ no longer employs support staff, but contracts and sub-contracts to God-knows who, have made us forget the people we rely on. If we ever get out this, things are going to have to change.
Monday 11 May 2020
On Saturday I was up early. At 8.45 I walked straight into M&S to buy picnic food. Yep, they still have 3 little tubs for £7. As I walked back out, I found myself in the clothes racks and was hit by sudden nostalgia for clothes shopping. I had to pinch myself to remember that I don’t need any more clothes.
I walked back around the bus station, past the Bethlehem Chapel, which describes itself as “a Bible-Believing Church”. Up until now it has had the standard coronavirus sign outside: closed for the duration, live on in our hearts etc. On Saturday that had gone. Instead, a couple of apparently new signs: Sunday, 11am – Lord’s Prayers; Thursday – bible class, all welcome. Is lockdown falling apart?
It has certainly changed, as Tom and I discovered as we piled our luxury picnic onto our backs and cycled to Richmond Park’s Ham Gate. Outside were a lot of cars, with family groups removing picnic hampers. In a couple of cases, suspiciously large, three-generation family groups.
We left our bikes at the gate, found a shady tree away from the world, and enjoyed our feast. We then wandered very slowly, admiring groups of hinds, who have not yet given birth. We skirted around the closed Isabella Plantation, looking longingly over the fence at the vivid colours of azaleas and rhododendrons. “It would be really east to climb over just here”, Tom pointed out. But we didn’t. We are old and respectable and despite everything, have been pretty much following the rules.
Sunday 7pm was billed as Johnson’s big speech to the nation. “7pm!” I moaned. “I don’t do news after 6pm.” But it was a BIG THING, so Tom and I turned on the radio to hear what our leader had to say to us.
What the hell? What was all that about?
Everyone seems to have heard in their own message in the speech. Mike, who was expecting the Army to open for business noticed all the caution stuff. I was expecting caution, so heard “Get back to work, you lazy sods”. D was also bemused: “We were told to be lerts in the 1970s” she said. “So I’ve become one. And I definitely want to stay a lert now, with all this scary coronavirus around.” D said she definitely heard, “Go back to work on Monday. ” Tom and I went over the text of the speech to find it said “starting this week”. If he meant Wednesday, how hard is it to say Wednesday?
Afterwards, in an attempt to lighten the mood, we watched Nina Conti, the ventriloquist, doing an interactive show by zoom. We both love Nina Conti, but this didn’t work. The audience, at home on the sofa, sounded embarrassed and self-conscious, failing to merge into that single laughing group that comics rely on. And this isn’t the time to laugh at someone for being a “digital media strategist”. Everyone with silly made-up non-jobs is feeling bad enough right now without having a monkey enter their home to tell them how irrelevant they are.
Even the News Quiz didn’t cheer us up. The panel all laughing uproariously is not the same as genuine laughter from a studio audience. When we went to bed, we were still cross, and upset, and anxious, and unready for sleep.
If you’ve been following me on Twitter or reading any of my stuff on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed that Something Wicked is on offer at 99p/99c. The offer started yesterday and runs for a week, so you have until Wednesday night to grab a copy.
It’s only 99p, so hardly worth spending time on your purchase decision. It makes sense to just buy it. But I know that people (and I definitely include myself) just don’t think like that. Wiser heads than mine say that nowadays you have to pay for advertising to persuade people to take up an offer of a book that is free. Which is fair enough, I guess. We’re all busy and a stack (albeit a virtual stack) of books in your Kindle can mean we’re likely to die before we read them all. And we can do without that sort of reminder that we are not immortal.
(Of course, if you were a vampire, you would be nearly immortal, so you could just read Something Wicked for the vampires and then you can fantasise about reading all the books you know you’re never going to get round to. Just saying.)
So why should you read it?
First up: it’s quite short. If you want to read ten thousand books before you die, Something Wicked will move you almost effortlessly one closer to your goal.
Next, it’s quite funny. (I’m going on the reviews here. No writer is a reliable judge of their own humour.) It takes a slightly sideways look at vampires. They still have the whole avoiding daylight, drinking blood thing going for them, but they quite like garlic and their main concern is just to be left to live quietly, sipping the odd drop of blood (they don’t really need that much) from people who get quite turned on by that. They do enjoy tango though.
This brings us to the third reason you should buy it. It’s got tango in it. They say you should write what you know, so a story about tango-dancing vampires was an obvious choice for me. And, given that I know lots of tango dancers who I have never seen by daylight, it’s quite likely that there’s a fair few vampires hanging around in our community. Anyway, you can have fun exploring London’s tango scene in between visits to the Victorian Gothic of Brompton Cemetery. (That’s worth a visit too.)
Did I mention that it’s a police procedural? If you were a solid old-school copper, how would you cope with teaming up with a vampire who has been investigating murders (and maybe committing the odd killing too) for hundreds of years? Meet Chief Inspector Galbraith and find out how he gets on with the mysterious Chief Inspector Pole.
And that, if you needed any more reasons to buy it, is the best reason of all. Galbraith and Pole were popular enough for people to sat they would like another story about them and the second Galbraith & Pole book, Eat the Poor, will be published later this month. You could read it without reading Something Wicked first, but you’ll probably enjoy them more if you read them in order. And did I mention that Something Wicked is currently just 99p?
Every Thursday I post an excerpt from my wife’s journal written two years earlier. A few people have said how much they like this reminder of what was happening, especially as we are often being presented with official versions that don’t seem to fit our memories of the period.
Sunday 3 May 2020
Week 7 of lockdown completed. Today is officially dawn chorus day – which I remembered when I woke up at 5am. I opened the window and we lay in bed listening to the trills and warbles, sounding clear in the still air.
I didn’t go back to sleep and now feel tired and jazzed and shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions. So I’ve been marking essays. I dreaded opening them – just how bad could they be? How would students have coped, alone in the bedrooms with life falling apart around them? I‘m amazed. The people who submitted on time have risen to the occasion. I’ve marked nine, and given three firsts. I don’t understand teaching. So often it is just throwing stuff at the wall, yet something seems to have stuck.
Last week we overcame our many fears and took our skates to Richmond Park. The scary stuff about Richmond Park: crossing Richmond Bridge; the steep hill up; the even steeper hills down; and the possibility of being stopped by the police. We finally overcame all that. I puffed up the hill slowly, but enjoyed the hill down, jamming on my heel brake. Tom was the opposite. He raced up the hill and (without a heel brake) dithered nervously at the top of downhills.
Kids on various forms of bike and scooters are now colonising the space abandoned by cars. I’ve seen a couple of hopscotch games chalked on pavements – the first time for 40 years. Adult bikes are officially banned from the park, although there were loads around. I was much relieved to see a police car pass us unconcerned and stop the cyclist behind us. [The logic of the ban was that cyclists were congregating a way that breached social distancing regulations. Fortunately there weren’t enough skaters for us to form a crowd.]
The park was amazing. Space – freedom – blue skies – clear views of the city, lacking that rim of dark grey haze we have come to expect. We did a full figure of eight over 14 miles, including the whole of the perimeter (double bends and all) plus the internal bike path (twice). We even met a regular from the London street skates and stopped for a chat (6 feet apart, of course). “I’m loving it. I skate all the time”. She looked tanned.
So emboldened were we by this that we returned to Bushey Park WITH A PICNIC. We found an out-of-the-way spot, by a stream, in front of pink and purple azaleas, where the only people around were a) many metres away and b) also engaged in dodgy picnicking. A sunny lazy day, with echoes of youth and lost times.
On Monday the weather turned, and we’ve been stuck inside. On Thursday, I needed to get to Tesco in heavy rain. So, for the first time since lockdown, I got onto a London bus. The driver is sealed off, along with the card reader, so buses are now effectively free. And, despite the rain, reasonably empty.
The gaping hole in our lives right now is the absence of a plan to get out of this. Logically, the “right” things must be to have a much tighter lockdown for (say) another month to get this virus under control, followed by an aggressive programme of test, track and trace. “Not going to work”, said Tom. “People won’t put up with it”. D. also snorted: “No way. People want to get out. And the testing programme won’t work. Forget it.”
D had been quite sympathetic to Matt Handcock. When I moaned that the 100,000 test target was pulled straight out of the air, she said it was “good to be ambitious”. Then, perceptively, she suggested that they were deliberately holding back test kits, to send them all out on 30 April. She was right. That’s it. I will never say “he’s doing his best in difficult circumstances” again.
